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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105690">Dark Knight: Dominion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan'>tielan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:41:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,559</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Froday Flash Fiction Fandom Battle</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dark Knight: Dominion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">She did not fear death.</p><p class="western">The cord with which she was bound was thin. At her usual strength, she could easily have broken it.</p><p class="western">It was the curse of an Amazon that she lost her strength when bound.</p><p class="western">As they walked her into the cathedral, the high gothic spires thrusting up into the endless bleak grey of the city skyline, Diana looked up, into the hanging heads of those who had defied and died.</p><p class="western">What means of mortuary skill kept the flesh unrotting, Diana could not imagine. Magic, perhaps, to renew their flesh daily, like Tartarus in his pit? And what better torment existed for those who had opposed and failed, but to witness those who followed in their footsteps, brought low by the Dark One?</p><p class="western">They hung by their hair, staring down at those who entered his sanctuary with eyes that told of the horrors they’d endured before death had come at last, a release. And she shivered as she walked beneath them, feeling their eyes upon her, hearing their screams in her mind as she passed beneath their grisly remains and into the cathedral proper.</p><p class="western">The young man walking before her glanced curiously over his shoulder at her. He was adolescent, and the younger of the two - the one walking at her back was his senior by several years and his superior by several dozen pounds of muscle.</p><p class="western">They had not been the ones to take her down, of course. There was no man her match in physical strength but one - and that one had vanished many moons ago, with neither sign nor trace of his going.</p><p class="western">Tonight, her assailant had been her match, not in physical strength, but in warrior skill. He had swiftly defeated her, using guile, tactics, and techniques which she had recognised but never learned. She was ashamed to acknowledge his skill outstripped hers as Master to a mere acolyte - and she was no mean warrior.</p><p class="western">A bitter smile touched her lips. There would be no-one, at least, to witness his conquest. Of those who had gone up against him, she was the last; all others had been defeated.</p><p class="western">They hustled her down the aisle, silent in the darkness, using only the faintest touches to indicate where she should go, or to redirect her when she went astray. She had little time for more than the briefest of glances around her, the cloying scent of incense thick in the air, the faintest hint of something earthier, muskier, in the air around.</p><p class="western">Deep in the high reaches of this desecrated holy place, creatures rustled, and she looked up at the looming weight of the items that had been hung from the support beams, gleaming in the light. A giant coin here, a monstrous creature there…</p><p class="western">“Keep moving.” The voice behind her was the older of the two young men, perhaps in his early twenties, authoratative with the confidence of one schooled in command, perhaps even bred to it. Whatever could be said about the Dark One, he was a master of the human mind. His acolytes were corrupted young, taken from their parents where he saw merit, trained, raised high according to their abilities, and taught the ways of coercion and power.</p><p class="western">From what his opponents could tell, the young ones were not abused - either physically or emotionally. He demanded of them, but not more than they could manage; he expected of them, but not so harshly that they were doomed to failure; he laid no finger on them other than in training or in gestures of affection. In that, at least, there was nothing to complain of him.</p><p class="western">What his opponents knew was that the ones who made it through his testing emerged in his image - dangerous when underestimated. More than one of his opponents had discovered that - to their cost.</p><p class="western">Ahead, the high bronzed portals to the inner sanctum swung slowly open, as though in response to their approach.</p><p class="western">She wondered what happened when a visitor came that the Dark One didn’t wish to see.</p><p class="western">Within the nave of the cathedral, candles burned high in their sconces, grouped together so many that they incandesced as she looked upon them. They bowed gently as she passed, like subjects to a queen, although the command they obeyed was not hers but the faint, breathy wind that accompanied her and the sentinels who watched her.</p><p class="western">And the man who was the focus of this place of worship sat in shadow, high on his ebony throne upon the dais.</p><p class="western">The points of his high-backed throne rose tall and forbidding above him, like thin, pointed ears listening to every sibillant whisper of the breeze. Behind him, two huge candleabras spread their candled facets out like great wings of light. The brilliance of their light cast his face and features into shadow, illuminating only the general shape of him, long and lean and muscular.</p><p class="western">“Diana, Princess of the Amazons, Flower of Themiscyra, termed ‘Wonder Woman’ by the common peoples.” The voice rang out from the darkness, soft as velvet, deep as the ocean, and with the imminent deadliness of a knife in sheath where tempers ran hot. “Welcome to my cathedral.”</p><p class="western">Earlier tonight, she had heard that voice mocking her from the shadows, cloaked in darkness.</p><p class="western">“Your welcome leaves much to be desired,” she stated, narrowing her eyes in the hope of better seeing the man who sat in the shadows, nameless, faceless, merciless.</p><p class="western">“Those who have truly found my welcome wanting would disagree, Princess,” he said with a soft laugh. “You met them as you entered.”</p><p class="western">Diana remembered the grisly spectacle at the entrance to the cathedral. “And will my fate be as theirs?”</p><p class="western">One shoulder lifted, formed of shadows and more shadows, and one long-fingered hand turned upwards in supplication. “Who can say?” Deep irony resonated in his voice, and she felt the cold traceries of fear touch her for the first time.</p><p class="western">The man before her held to no law but his whims, acknowledged no authority but himself, and would brook no defiance within his bourne. Especially not from one of his prisoners.</p><p class="western">She had been at the mercy of dictators before. She had always escaped.</p><p class="western">This was different.</p><p class="western">Even as she struggled to determine what had changed, he stood, and the light fell over his features unmasked.</p><p class="western">Earlier tonight, she had faced the cowled man, seen little more of him than the line of his jaw and the hard fullness of his lip. Now, she saw him barefaced, bareheaded, with only his thick, dark hair as his covering. He was paler than she’d expected, but then, he preferred shadows and saw little of the daylight. Eyes that might have been pale blue in the daylight were deepened by the eternal twilight of the sanctuary, and they watched the world, deepset, from beneath a wide, lofty brow, unscarred.</p><p class="western">He was handsome, even in his cruelty. Diana recognised the one as simply as she knew the other.</p><p class="western">“You have me at a disadvantage,” she said, returning him irony for irony. “I do not know your name.”</p><p class="western">That was one thing they had never managed to discover. His origins had been deliberately obscured by magic, they could trace this man as far back as the moment he took over Gotham from the civil authorities, but not a moment before.</p><p class="western">“Perhaps I have none.”</p><p class="western">“Are you then superstitious, to refuse to give up your name to your enemies?” Diana challenged, hoping to provoke him into anger.</p><p class="western">He laughed then, real amusement as he advanced down the stairs towards her, graceful as a feline, and just as deadly. “I think you know I’m not,” he said, “But it was a good goad.”</p><p class="western">With a sinking feeling, she saw he’d recognised her attempt to prick him out of his control. She would have to be careful; he was far more intelligent than they had realised. Perhaps why they had, in the end, failed to bring him down? Even humans could have their quirks of brilliance - this man was evidently one of them.</p><p class="western">“My parents called me Bruce.” Broad shoulders shrugged. “It’s served me well enough through the years.”</p><p class="western">She watched him from the corner of her eye as he circled her slowly until he drew up before her. This close, she could see the lines of bitterness etched into the corners of mouth and eyes, the signs of encroaching age in the few white hairs at his temples. This close, she could see the sensuous curve of lower lip and the heavy sweep of his eyelashes, thick and dark as any woman could want for herself, but unquestionably masculine on him.</p><p class="western">This close, she could feel the presence of him, as powerful as that of any of her now-dead friends.</p><p class="western">The League was dead and gone. She was the last.</p><p class="western">One fingertip lifted up the point of her chin, then tilted her head this way and that, like a buyer inspecting goods.</p><p class="western">Discomforted, she broke the silence. He had captured her, that did not make her his slave. “So if your name has only served you ‘well enough’ these last years, what do you <em>prefer</em> to be called?”</p><p class="western">Too late, she realised her error and knew his answer before he gave it. “As a general rule,” he murmured, his breath whispering along her jaw, “I prefer to be called ‘Master’.”</p>
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